We thought this recent blog article from the Brazos Valley Collaborative Law Alliance was worth a share — written by former Collaborative Law Institute of Texas board member and BVCLA founding member Tracy Stewart, it looks at six benefits of choosing collaborative law for settling a divorce.
She’s able to boil the six benefits down to single words — control, support, focus, money, future, and deal. The ideas behind the single words are cornerstones of why collaborative law was launched as an alternative to traditional divorces, and why it continues to be sought after by divorcing couples who don’t want to sink money and energy into an acrimonious court battle. Control, of course, refers to the idea that “you have control instead of the attorneys or the court having control.”
Each additional word adds an additional facet to the argument for collaborative law. Deal, the sixth and final word in the series, refers to the deal at the end of the process. Namely, the deal is better for those who choose collaborative, in that “your collaborative final divorce agreements will be more detailed than if you stood before a judge in a contested court proceeding.” She makes the additional great point that “a judge does not love your children like you do” — a reminder that you, as parents, are best equipped to determine a settlement that works best for your children.
Lately, Stewart’s been thinking about the idea of “support” — specifically, the work that the BVCLA mental health professional, Faith Wilson, does with their clients. She noted:
“Our attorneys refer to her as the gold standard on parenting issues, effective communications and parenting education. Our clients will reach out to her for help on all sorts of children-related issues. How will we organize our kids’ summer plans? How will we tell our kids about the divorce? How will we help little Johnny improve his grades? Our daughter refuses to visit her father, what can we do to get past this?
And please don’t get the idea that the parents are working together when they call her. In many situations, there is a problem because they don’t agree on something. She gets them to the point of agreement. All the while she is teaching them how to co-parent and how to communicate with each other.
It means lots of hand holding for Faith, but she is really good at that. She handles these issues by phone, text, email, carrier pigeon and in person.”
There are collaborative lawyers throughout Texas who want their clients to put those six key words to work in their divorce. The best way to get started in searching for a collaborative law professional in your part of Texas is to go to the CLI-TX collaborative professional finder — the people on this list can help assemble a team to support anyone looking for a better way to divorce.
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